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Sunday, 11 September 2016

Busy Busy Busy - Sherman Progress

Hi Folks,

With one thing and another it's been two weeks since the last blog post - although those of you who follow me on Facebook will have seem more regular updates. It's currently 3 weeks till wedding day, and the last few weeks have been busy with family events. Last weekend I got to see my son for a few hours for the first time in over a year, which was great. I was in Inverary, a historic Scottish town, and managed to get a few pictures:

Hobby wise, I've been chipping away at the 9 Shermans I've been working on. Decals all done, aerials in place, just the finishing touches before matt varnish. I've had my usual issues with the Polish armour, being a bit unsure about where to put squadron markings. I've seen various pictures with various options and I think I am just going to stick with the rear turret only. I might revisit this in the future, but I don't have enough of the correct decals to do the whole lot currently (rear turret, side hull). Unit wise I decided that the Poles would be the 24th Lancers Regiment - I like lancers!

So, some progress shots:

The Polish troop command tank is currently without aerials as I plan on putting a pennant on the aerial and my have to do this before I stick anything together. Whether to use a copy of an early war pennant or just a white and red pennant, I'm not sure. We shall see!

Image found online, used without permission.

Still to put together the bases for these tanks and grab some crew for the turret hatches. I should have some of those painted somewhere already.

I finished the German MG nests (resin models from Small Terrain Scenery), leaving me with only the minefields to sort out:

Purchase wise, I've received a 'Katy' Ambulance, a British radio truck and a tracked 17 Pounder tow vehicle (based on the hull of a Crusader tank, I think) - pictures below (sorry about the quality). I'll do a review on these properly once they are put together. I also got a final 2 limbered 17 Pounders (to add to the 2 I got from ebay months ago, allowing me to model the unit being towed) and a model of a Sherman ARV mk1 (the same model as I previously converted, but for my Poles).

Gaming wise I've managed to get along to the club again, making it to the second meeting. Unfortunately with wedding and honeymoon it will be a few weeks before I'm back.

This week there was some variety of games, with 3 tables set up. 1 was American Civil War naval (Smoke on the Water?), one was an ancients game using Hail Caesar and the 3rd was a 1000pt Flames of War game between me and Steve/Yorkie.

Mine and Steve's game was between my Jocks (as per usual) and a Grenadier list.

We set up random terrain - this was all my stuff and the first time a lot of it had been out of the packaging.

We rolled for a random mission, and got 'surrounded'. As I had the breaching group, I got 'Always Attacks', so Steve was defending. He deployed his forces, I deployed mine and we got to it. I think we made it to turn 4 before we had to call it, and the game could have gone either way. I lost most of my tanks and all my A/T guns, but I had two platoons of infantry moving into position, had killed all the A/T guns and things were looking positive.

Another great game and we are both still picking up the rules as we go. Hopefully we will get quicker and be able to finish a game in a night!

So that's a quick roundup from me. I'll try and get these Shermans done and pictures up before the wedding, but it may be a while before regular service resumes - although I do have permission to take my Cromwells on honeymoon for those quiet evenings that the Mrs to be wants to read. But that will just be assembly!

Good stuff mate - lots of stuff in a post makes it well worth reading. :) The new shermans look the business. Why not hand paint the markings you don't have decals for? MG Nests are very natural seeming. Hope so much so that they blend in during games!

Thanks Dai - Think I've moved twice since we last mailed each other, so don't worry about a card (unless it's stuffed with money, in which case I'll send you my new address :P)

I'm rubbish at hand painting, especially geometric shapes. I'll see how I get on. TBH after the weathering of the hull I'm not sure the decals would really stand out anyway! The white star is faded quite a bit!